Winner of the Sara A. Whaley Book Prize
Reproduction Reconceived
Family Making and the Limits of Choice
After Roe v. Wade
We tend to associate Roe with the choice to not have children, but the landmark Supreme Court decision was equally transformative for Americans' understanding of family--having and raising children also became a choice. This redefinition occurred at the same time that different forms of inequality worsened, turning choice into more myth than reality for far too many.
Incarceration, for-profit and racist healthcare, disease, and poverty were worsened by state neglect in the decades following Roe. And as different families' conditions deteriorated, the labor required to maintain familial ties proliferated. Ultimately, Sara Matthiesen offers an urgent historical account: of the labors families were made to expend to simply survive in the face of state neglect; and of the costs that pile up when family making is regarded as a private responsibility rather than a public good.
Praise for Reproduction Reconceived
“A meticulously researched history of the US state's effort to constrict motherhood among the poor, lesbians, incarcerated women, and Black women.”
— Sherie M. Randolph, author of Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical
“Compellingly argued and compulsively readable.”
— Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, New York University
“A must-read for anyone who cares about the well-being of working families.”
— Premilla Nadasen, author of Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States
“Brilliant and detailed history of women's 'family making'.”
— Jennifer Nelson, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Redlands
About Sara Matthiesen
Sara Matthiesen works on modern U.S. history, with an emphasis on gender, race, sexuality, and reproduction after 1945. Her current book, Reproduction Reconceived (University of California Press), examines battles over the right to family making since the 1970s. This project traces a number of debates between activists and public institutions in order to understand how family making was reconceptualized as a choice by the end of the 20th century.
Sara has taught courses on the history of reproductive politics, the history of criminal sexualities, feminist theory, and critical legal theory. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington University, she was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University. She also teaches in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at GWU.
